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100: Leslie and Steve Kaczeus

Niwot couple found happiness and built a gathering spot at the same time

By Tony Kindelspire

Times-Call staff writer

Posted:
03/30/2014 01:00:00 AM MDT

Updated:
03/22/2015 03:49:09 PM MDT

Leslie and Steve Kaczeus both left high-tech careers to open their brewery in June 2012. In two years, the Niwot residents have created a community hub that didn't exist in Niwot before. Aside from its popular beers, Bootstrap features live music on Saturdays and Monday nights and other fun events during the week. (Lewis Geyer / Longmont Times-Call)

The word "pub" is short for public house, an ages-old English term meaning a community gathering place.

That's what Niwot's Leslie and Steve Kaczeus have successfully created in less than two years since founding Bootstrap Brewing Co., 6778 N. 79th St., in Niwot.

Steve and Leslie Kaczeus

Ages: 54 and 46

Occupation: Owners, Bootstrap Brewing Co.

Years in St. Vrain Valley: 19 and 22

Bootstrap — a name coined by Leslie after the couple was forced to pare their original business plan back to keep expenses in check — is the fulfillment of the couple's long-standing dream to go into business together.

"We spent a lot of time in breweries and beer gardens thinking, 'What are we passionate about? What do we enjoy doing together,'" said Leslie Kaczeus, whose Bootstrap business card reads "chief of stuff."

It turns out that during those discussions the couple were, literally, holding the answer to their dreams right in their hands.

High-tech industry veterans, the couple met while both worked at Longmont's MiniScribe in 1986. In June of 2012 they opened Bootstrap in the town they love.

"We live here in Niwot," Steve Kaczeus said. "Our kids went to school here. And we always thought it would be a great spot to have a local brewery."

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The seedlings for Bootstrap go all the way back to Christmastime 2005, when Seagate announced it was buying out its biggest competitor, Maxtor. A mechanical engineer and program manager, Steve was a Maxtor employee in Longmont when the news hit.

"None of us knew if we had jobs or not," he said. "So that was kind of the catalyst. (Leslie and I) had always talked about starting our own business."

Steve survived the first wave of layoffs the following year, when Seagate cut two-thirds of the former Maxtor workers. But discussions between him and Leslie of taking his hobby — he had been homebrewing for 20-plus years — and turning it into a business continued.

He talked to every local brewer he could find and asked them about the business of running a craft brewery. They were welcoming and realistic with him, Steve said. And the more he heard and thought about leaving behind some of the constrictions of corporate life, the more excited he became.

A turning point was signing up for courses with the American Brewers Guild, a nationally renowned brewing school where he could learn the science behind his hobby.

"Me being an engineer, I needed to understand what's going on at the molecular level. ... It was extremely important for me to have that as a background, because I didn't have any professional brewing experience," Steve said.

Leslie flew out to California in 2011 to join Steve at his graduation ceremony, and afterward, the couple was scheduled for a week's getaway to Napa Valley, where they would decide once and for all if they were going to leave their jobs — he at Seagate and she running a nonprofit — and pursue their dream.

"I pulled into the parking lot and I went in and saw his face and I said, 'OK, there's no discussion,'" Leslie said.

So the trip to Northern California turned into a celebration of their decision, Steve said. Then came the hard work.

They bought a turn-key, 3 ½ -barrel brewing system and stuck it in storage. Leslie started looking around for a location, first in Niwot and then other cities in Boulder County.

She wasn't having a lot of luck, she said, until she saw a blurb in the Niwot paper that CrossFit was closing its Niwot location. She went in to take a look.

"It had so much character," Leslie said of the space. "A lot of the ones we had been looking at were more industrial."

Steve said he loved the space's high ceilings, and added that it didn't hurt that the building's owner is, as he put it, a "beer geek."

Friends and neighbors stepped in and helped his wife turn the space into what you see today, Steve said.

"Leslie was really the primary driver of the construction while I was completing my time at Seagate," he said.

In less than two years Bootstrap has distinguished itself among Boulder County's busy craft brewing scene. The couple feature live music on Mondays and Saturdays, trivia on Tuesdays, game night on Wednesdays, and they're adding other specialty event-features such as a dessert and beer pairing and maybe some beer dinners in the future, Leslie said.

Supporting the nonprofit and the arts scene in Niwot has been important to the couple since the beginning, she said.

The foundation of the business, though, is the beer, for which Bootstrap has won multiple awards. The brewery keeps seven standard flavors on tap, including green chile beer, and its 22-ounce bombers are in 27 area liquor stores.

The company recently bought a 15-barrel fermenter that will support enough production to begin canning, something Sanitas Brewing Co. in Boulder is helping them with. This spring they'll come out with at least two of their beers in cans, Steve said.

"My fear was what if I brew and nobody comes, and Leslie's was what if you can't brew enough?" Steve said.

And, in the interest of further putting Niwot on the map and helping promote their industry, the couple are helping the Longmont-based Colorado Beer Trail plan the New Brew Fest: Boulder County, a daylong music and craft beer event scheduled for May 10.

New Brew Fest is open only to breweries five years or younger, and already more more than 25 have signed up.

All of which is keeping the couple extremely busy, and they are quick to say thanks to their staffers, Bob and (another) Leslie, who keep the Kaczeuses from having to put in 80- to 100-hour workweeks.

And, they say, they're thankful to the community of Niwot and Boulder County at large for embracing them as they have.

"We have so many people, especially the locals, that come in here and thank us for opening this place," Steve said.

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